It is known that both muscles and bones should be exercised to maintain strength. It is also known that healing fractures, exposed to permissible weight bearing stress, often heal more predictably and more rapidly than fractures which are not stressed at all. This is probably also true for connective tissues, such as ligaments and articular cartilage.
When an individual sustains a physical injury which involves damage to bones, muscle tissue, connective tissue or the like, the physician treating the individual will make a determination as to whether exercise will be allowed. The physician will allow exercise if the physician can obtain assurances that the exercise will be performed in a controlled manner within specific parameters wherein the injured bone and/or tissue will remain stable. Unfortunately, however, the physician is generally unable to obtain adequate information or assurances about the manner in which a particular patient will conduct prescribed exercise. Furthermore, because the physician is also unable to obtain adequate feedback after the patient performs any specific prescribed exercise, the physician generally does not feel he or she has sufficient access to information about the exercise to permit or recommend anything but the most basic exercise. Without some way to obtain information about exercise events, the physician cannot maintain sufficient control of the exercise. The physician does not know how much stress the patient can or will exert voluntarily, and does not know how well the patient will adhere to a schedule of repetitive exercise events.
Since the physician is not able to obtain adequate feedback regarding the patient's exercise, the most prudent course of action for the physician is to limit the amount of exercise which the patient is allowed to perform by immobilizing the portions of the body proximate the injury. This is often accomplished by using a cast which is the simplest and crudest method of protecting an injury. The cast allows virtually no movement at all and is widely used to insure against reinjuries. Unfortunately, this method of protecting the injury often does not provide adequate means for exercising the body portions proximate the injury. For instance, a cast is often not strong enough, without additional reinforcement, to permit isometric exercising. Furthermore, casts are not equipped to provide feedback to the physician or the patient with respect to any exercising.
Accordingly, a need exists for a personal orthopedic restraining device which will permit and encourage a range of exercise during rehabilitation and provide sufficient feedback to the prescribing physician to allow the physician to evaluate the patient's progress in regard to the exercise the physician has prescribed. A need also exists for a personal restraining device which is equipped to give the patient immediate feedback respecting exercise events. Although it has been known that exercise is helpful in rehabilitating patients and others having orthopedic disabilities, inadequacies, or the like, adequate devices for methods of restraining respective body parts and monitoring the exercise thereof have not been provided which adequately address this problem.
The present invention provides a solution to these and other problems, and offers other advantages over the prior art.